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Rh to White Island in the Bay of Plenty. The upper Waikato enters the lake from the south near Tokaano, where there is another collection of springs, &c. The river forms several fine falls and rapids below the lake.

TAURELLUS, NICOLAUS (1547–1606), German philosopher and theologian, was born at Mömpelgard. He read theology at Tübingen and medicine at Basel, where he lectured on physical science. He subsequently became professor of medicine at Altdorf, where he died in 1606. He attacked the dominant Aristotelianism of the time, and endeavoured to construct a philosophy which should harmonize faith and knowledge, and bridge over the chasm made by the first Renaissance writers who followed Pomponazzi. Scholasticism he condemned on account of its unquestioning submission to Aristotle. Taurellus maintained the necessity of going back to Christianity itself, as at once the superstructure and the justification of philosophy.

TAURI, the earliest known inhabitants of the mountainous south coast of the Crimea (Herodotus iv. 103). Nothing is certain as to their affinities. They probably represent an old population perhaps connected with some Caucasus stock; in spite of the resemblance of the name Taurisci they are not iikely to be Celts. They were famous in the ancient world for their maiden goddess, identified by the Greeks with Artemis Tauropolos or Iphigeneia, Whom the goddess was said to have brought to her shrine at the moment when she was to have been sacrificed at Aulis. Orestes sought his sister, and almost fell a victim to the Tauric custom of sacrificing to the maiden shipwrecked strangers, a real custom which was the ground of the whole myth. His adventures were the subject of plays by Euripides and Goethe. Towards the end of the 2nd century we find the Tauri dependent allies of the Scythian king Scilurus, who from their harbour of Symbolon Portus or Palacium (Balaclava) harassed (q.v.). Their later history is unknown.

TAURIDA, a government of southern Russia, including the peninsula of Crimea and a tract of mainland situated between the lower Dnieper and the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It is bounded by these two seas on the S., while it has on the N. the governments of Kherson and Ekaterinoslav. The area is 24,532 sq. m., of which 9704 sq. m. belong to the Crimea. The continental part consists of a gently undulating steppe (from sea-level up to 400 ft. in the north-east) of black earth, with only a few patches of saline clay on the shores of the Sivash or Putrid Sea, and sand along the lower Dnieper. The government is drained by the Dnieper, which flows along the frontier for 180 m., and by two minor streams, the Molochnaya and Berda. Many small lakes and ponds occur in the north, as well as on the Kinburn peninsula, at the mouth of the Dnieper, where salt is made. There are no forests. The climate is continental, and resembles that of central Crimea and Kherson. The population in 1906 was estimated at 1,634,700. The continental portion, although less mixed than that of the peninsula, consists of Great and Little Russians, who constitute 83 per cent. of the whole, Germans (5.4 per cent.), Bulgarians (2.8 per cent.), Jews (3.8 per cent.), and Armenians. The chief occupation of the people is agriculture, and every available patch of land has been brought under the plough. In 1900 no less than 43 per cent. of its area was under cereal crops alone. The principal crops are rye, wheat, oats, barley and potatoes(Tobacco is also grown, and over 32,000 acres are under vineyards, while gardens extend to some 15,500 acres in Crimea. Live-stock breeding is extensively engaged in. Salt is the only mineral raised, but the iron industry, and especially the manufacture of agricultural machinery (e.g. at Berdyansk), has greatly developed. The export trade is considerable, the chief ports being Sevastopol, Eupatoria, Theodosia, and Yalta on the Black Sea, and Azov and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov. The fisheries along the coast are active. Manufactures are insignificant, but there is a brisk export trade in grain, salt, fish, wool and tallow. The government is divided into eight districts, the chief towns of which are Simferopol, capital of the government, Eupatoria and Theodosia, in Crimea, and Aleshki, Berdyansk, Melitopol, Perekop and Yalta on the continent.

TAURINI, an ancient Ligurian people, although the name may be of Celtic origin, who occupied the upper valley of the Padus (Po) in the centre of the modern Piedmont. In 218 they were attacked by Hannibal, with whose friends the Insubres they had a long-standing feud, and their chief town (Taurasia) was captured after a three days' siege (Polybius iii. 60, 8). As a people they are rarely mentioned in history. It is not known when they definitely became subject to the Romans, nor when the colony of (Julia) Augusta Taurinorum (Torino, Turin) was founded in their territory (probably by Augustus after the battle of Actium). Both Livy (v. 34) and Strabo (iv. p. 209) speak of the country of the Taurini as including one of the passes of the Alps, which points to a wider use of the name in earlier times.

See H. Nissen, Italische Landeskunde, ii. (1902), p. 163; and ancient authorities quoted in A. Holder, Altceltischer Sprachschatz, ii. (1904).

 TAUROBOLIUM, the sacrifice of a bull, usually in connexion with the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods, though not limited to it. Of oriental origin, its first known performance in Italy occurred in 134, at Puteoli, in honour of Venus Caelestis. Prudentius describes it in Peristephanon (x., 1066 ff.): the priest of the Mother, clad in a toga worn cinctu Gabino, with golden crown and fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain. The blood rains through the platform on to the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his tongue and palate, and after the baptism presents himself before his fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence.

The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community, its date frequently being the 24th of March, the Dies Sanguinis of the annual festival of the Great Mother and Attis. In the late 3rd and the 4th centuries its usual motive was the purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity, in consequence of the ceremony (Corp. Insc. Lat. vi. 510–512). When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years. It was also performed as the fulfilment of a vow, or by command of the goddess herself, and the privilege was limited to no sex nor class. The place of its performance at Rome was near the site of St Peter's, in the excavations of which several altars and inscriptions commemorative of taurobolia were discovered.

The taurobolium was probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis (q.v.). The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation. The ceremony' may be the spiritualized descent of the primitive oriental practice of drinking or being baptized in the blood of an animal, based upon a belief that the strength of brute creation could be acquired by consumption of its substance or contact with its blood. In spite of the phrase renatus in aeternum, there is no reason to suppose that the ceremony was in any way borrowed from Christianity.

(G. SN.)